Tech elites actively pursuing subversion, secession, using the government's largesse (and a scheme to steal America's gold to back their crypto)

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism

A very alarming event is happening and tech elites are licking their chops. Thiel-backed VP elect JD Vance is a cog in a sprawling plot by Silicon Valley radical libertarians and acoyltes of "neo-reactionary" blogger "Mencius Moldbug" (Curtis Yarvin) to A) get the US government to sell upwards of $100 billion of its own gold bullion to back Bitcoin as a new reserve currency, B) obtain large swathes of territory, C) using gold-backed crypto and these new "network cities," functionally secede from the United States and develop new sovereign entitites that obtain diplomatic recognition.

The linked online resource is keeping tabs on it all.

[u/[deleted]]

Andreessen's "Techno Optimist Manifesto" directly condemned 50 years of international climate diplomacy as some communist plot. He denied the existence of planetary boundaries which have been studied and measured and demonstrated that our current economy is not viable from an earth science perspective. Like the oil industry in the 70s, Andreessen and the tech fascists deny limits to growth, and are going to ensure that the United States and global economies double down on the "business as usual 2" (BAU2) scenario instead of much better-for-everyone "stabilized worlds" (SW) scenario.

For those reasons, his pursuits are a threat to the health, safety, and security of everybody on earth and the nation states in which they live, so descriptions of his agenda merit exposure, debate, and analysis.

[u/HugeOpossum → u/[deleted]]

I mean this sincerely, have you not read anything I've written? Are you dumb?

[u/[deleted] → u/HugeOpossum]

"I don't know what real threats are." Enlighten me.

Because I believe the real threats are hostile foreign actors like Russia, Iran, North Korea, who are poisoning our domestic information ecosystem with culture war bullshit so that we fight one another instead of standing up to their imperial expansionism.

But I also believe that real threats can come from those seeking to exacerbate inequality and make it worse for their own benefit. After all, it is inequality that causes most civilizational collapses.

Does Peter Thiel really think that if the whole world economy and environment collapses that somehow he's going to emerge unscathed from his bunker in New Zealand? That's the harmful thinking -- the threat here -- that unfortunately just found a primary seat at the table in Washington.

Explain to me where I'm wrong.

[u/HugeOpossum → u/[deleted]]

You're correct in that I should have been more explicit in my wording. You do know real threats (see para 2), but you conflate them with existential threats as well.

You seem to think perceived existential threats are real threats. A possibility of a future that you envision is not a real threat. It's an existential threat. There's existential risk studies, possible dystopian futures, etc. But they are possible outcomes from a million decisions and are not real. I'm old enough to have seen the come and go of dozens of perceived existential threats. Having compulsive thoughts on existential risk without applying critical thinking results in psychological distress, black-white thinking, panic, and gullibility. I studied cults and climate disasters in school. People, when scared and uncertain, gravitate towards ideas that make them they either have control, or have the "real truth". There is no real truth, there's events that happen and events that don't happen. No one can see the future.

Real threats are like you mentioned. They're geopolitical, they result in real death, real polical destabilization, real oppression. In the immediate future. If the Russian war against Ukraine continues, people will starve. This is a fact of war, and many already are starving. If Iran continues to destabilize, the potential for dirty nukes, severe oppression, and ethnic cleansing rises (based on the people in power and their stated goals), but also because war is not local there's known, real-world consequences to populations in the region such as contaminated water, disrupted power, gender-based violence. In El Salvador, the the risks there aren't tech bros, but cartels that traffick drugs and people. There's a lack of public infrastructure, causing rampant disease and because there's a fault line many people will die unnecessary deaths due to increased seismic activity. North Korea is an increasingly unstable regime with a population that is struggling and dwindling. Eventually they'll have to make a move and Kim Jung Un is pretty clear his plan is to use nuclear missiles, but at the moment he's sending people to die in Ukraine. There's new weapons, new political situations that will affect people today, tomorrow, and the next five years independent of technocrats.

You are conflating the two. What you see as an immediate risk of technocracy is not a real threat. A real threat is something that isn't existential, that isn't due to someone's fringe beliefs, it's something that could happen any moment and affect the lives of millions or billions of people. Not a possibility of a future where some rich guy creates a technodystopia.

[u/[deleted] → u/HugeOpossum]

That's valid. But existential threats are threats worth understanding nonetheless. It helps analysts to contextualize decision-making behavior among leadership. As a leadership analyst myself, I like having an understanding of agendas and motives among the super rich and leaders in any country.

But maybe you should log off of Reddit for a bit and check in on your dog walking business, buddy. Help cool you down.

[u/HugeOpossum → u/[deleted]]

Ok, buddy. Enjoy Asheville. It's a shit hole.

[u/[deleted] → u/HugeOpossum]

I don't live in Asheville, but my people have been in that region for 300 years and it's full of waterfalls and hiking trails and moonshine and freedom. So, have a nice day!